A novel experience for first-time penguin carer

NEW ZEALAND - Not many of us can say we've taken home a penguin, but now Animal Care veterninary nurse Kirsty Brewer is one of the lucky few who can. On the flip(per) side, Wallace, the little penguin in question, is one of a relatively small number of penguins who has been inside a human's house.

According to Hawke's Bay Today, Wallace - underweight, anaemic and dehydrated - was brought to Animal Care in early February by a group of young girls who found him on Ocean Beach .

Mrs Brewer has worked at the Havelock North veterinary centre for 10 years, but this is her first time caring for a penguin. The pampered Wallace goes home with her so he can be fed regularly and he has almost doubled his body weight. Following advice from penguin experts at Massey University and the Antarctic Centre in Christchurch, his diet is mostly salmon.

Animal Care is hoping Wallace will recover fully so that he can be released back into the wild. Otherwise, there may be a home of him at Auckland Zoo.

Source
Haven from out of the blue by Caitlin Nobes, 19 February 2011, Hawke's Bay Today

High levels of mercury in Perth's penguins

Little penguins on Penguin Island,
near Perth. Photo by John Lindie.
Some rights reserved.

AUSTRALIA - A Conservation Council of Western Australia study of little penguins has shown that marine life off Perth is contaminated with almost three times more of the toxic metal mercury than marine life in other parts of the state.

Penguins are a key indicator species of marine health because they eat a variety of fish. By analysing feather samples from adult and juvenile birds, the three-year study found that penguins on Penguin Island, 40km from Perth, had 1.7 milligrams of mercury per kilogram of feathers, compared to 0.6mg/kg in penguins on Woody Island, where mercury pollution is minimal.

"Our results show that the Perth site is contaminated with three times more mercury, mainly because you've got a lot more potential sources for mercury in the metropolitan area," lead researcher Nic Dunlop told The Sunday Times.

Penguins from a third colony on Mistaken Island near Albany were also tested and found to have mercury levels of 1.3mg/kg. This relatively high reading has been blamed on a phosphate plant in Albany that dumped waste into the harbour for almost 30 years.

Although the mercury level found in Perth's marine life was signficantly higher than elsewhere, Professor Dunlop said, "In our more industrialised areas, as far as we can tell, consuming fish is safe at the moment."

He added, however, that the oceans were Earth's biggest "mercury sink" and "it was going to get more and more difficult to get healthy seafood because the background levels of mercury are increasing quite rapidly".

Source
High mercury levels in Perth waters spark seafood concerns by Trevor Paddenburg, 19 February 2011, The Sunday Times

When the going gets tough, the tough keep breeding

It looks determined, but is this Adelie
penguin at Palmer Station a super-
breeder? Photo by Johnny Shaw.
Some rights reserved.

ANTARCTICA - Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a super-breeder! Actually, the answer to the first question is yes, it is a bird - an Adelie penguin, in fact. But what makes a penguin a super-breeder? Grant Ballard, David Ainley and Katie Dugger are co-principal investigators in a study looking at what makes some individual penguins better at foraging and breeding than others. What they find out will help them predict how penguins as a species will cope with climate change.

Ainley told the Antarctic Sun that while more penguins breed in "easy" years, during the "tough" years - when the sea ice extends and the journey to the open sea for food causes many penguin parents to fail - there are "super-breeders" that manage to raise their chicks to adulthood. These super-breeders, which sustain the population consistently, make up about 20% of a given colony.

The scientists have a large pool of banded, known-age birds they can track. They randomly select some super-breeders and normal penguins from the pool to wear time-depth recorders and monitor how long and deep each penguin dives on its foraging trips.

"We found these super-breeders are much better foragers. They dive deeper; they have a shorter recovery period at the surface between dives. They bring back more food," said Ainley.

Because the super-breeders forage more efficiently, it means their chicks get more food more often, as well as more parental protection for predators like skuas.

Ballard said that it is probably a combination of age and experience as well as genetics - being faster and stronger - that makes a penguin a super-breeder. Being older doesn't necessarily equate to breeding success.

One of the questions the researchers eventually hope to answer is to what extent super-breeder characteristics are hereditary. As Ballard told the Antarctic Sun, "There's still a huge amount of mystery when it comes down to it."

Source
Super breeders by Peter Rejcek, 18 February 2011, The Antarctic Sun

Penguin population shifts due to fishy factors?

ANTARCTICA - There's something fishy going on with the Adelie penguin populations in the Ross Sea region. Ecologist David Ainley, principal investigator for a long-term project trying to understand penguin population response to climate and ecosystem change, told the Antarctic Sun he is concerned that a toothfish fishery that operates in the Ross Sea may skew data collected by climate change researchers.

With the exception of the Cape Royds colony, which suffered a population crash after icebergs carved off the Ross Ice Shelf in 2000 and massively extended the penguins' journeys to the open sea, Adelie penguin colonies in the Ross Sea region have grown tremendously. Cape Crozier, possibly the largest Adelie penguin colony in the world, now has an estimated 230,000 breeding pairs; that's an increase of nearly 50,000 breeding pairs in the last decade. The nearby Beaufort Island colony has expanded from 40,000 to 55,000 breeding pairs.

While population increases like these should be good news, a possible explanation for them is not good: industrial fishing. In the 1996-97 austral summer, an Antarctic toothfish fishery began operating in the region. In less than a decade, scientists who had been successfully capturing and releasing Antarctic toothfish, known to consumers as "Chilean seabass", in McMurdo Sound for research since the 1970s could no longer find any. Research has shown that, at the same time, Ross Sea killer whales, which prey on toothfish, have decreased in occurence frequency. And there have been these increases in the populations of Adelie penguins, which compete with toothfish for food.

Ainley and others have argued that too little is known about toothfish, and Ainley said it was unwise to allow the fishery to operate without learning more about them. He told the Antarctic Sun that he believes the fishery may be taking too big a bite out of the toothfish population, and that although a lot of people would want to discount it, the fishery may be behind the apparent shift in populations of toothfish, penguins and whales.

While there are other environmental factors involved in the penguin population increases, such as the immigration of Cape Royds penguins who abandoned their colony in the "tough iceberg years" to neighbouring colonies, Ainley said immigration from Cape Royds cannot explain the rapid expansion of the other Ross Sea colonies.

"Just as when thousands of food-competing Antarctic minke whales were removed from the wintering area of Ross Sea penguins during the 1970s, Adelies are exhibiting a spurt of colony growth not easily explained by climate change," he told the Antarctic Sun.

Ainley is concerned that researchers like himself who are studying the effects of climate change on the marine ecosystem may have their data skewed by the fishery. He asked, "You're either studying climate change or you’re studying fish depletion, so what are you going to study?"

Source
Population pressures by Peter Rejcek, 18 February 2011, The Antarctic Sun

Dippy the penguin back on Facebook

UK - Dippy the penguin is back on Facebook after a two-week absence, following an outcry from his loyal friends.

The 17-year-old Humboldt penguin from the Isle of Wight's Seaview Wildlife Encounter became the first penguin to have a Facebook account when his keepers launched his profile page back in November 2009. Since then, nearly 3,000 Facebook users (not all human!) from around the world had added Dippy as a friend.

Dippy's profile page was "a really fun platform for many different types of communications with a diverse audience" and "a way to enjoy some light-hearted banter as well as sharing information on wildlife conservation in a fun, informative and engaging way".

Then, without warning or explanation, Dippy's account was closed on 7 February, leaving his keepers confused and upset. As they said on the Seaview Wildlife Encounter blog:

"There are so many crooked, underhand people in the world today; we all know of the daily reports of criminals and political activists in our midst who falsely represent themselves through various means including social media platforms like Facebook. Dippy the Penguin has been open about his innocent identity from the start - so why now? Why him? Why silence Dippy?"

Once his Facebook friends found out, Dippy and his keepers were "overwhelmed" with emails and enquiries of support. One, Liam Thistlewood, set up a "Get Dippy Back on Facebook" campaign. Another, Fiona Strange, wrote:

"Peter and I were shocked to hear about Dippy's Facebook page. All our friends in Scotland, England and Australia love having Dippy as a friend ... It's upsetting that your site can be closed down without giving you any reason. ...  I have learned more in the last year from Dippy about penguins, than I have from anywhere else in my life ... let's hope it won't be too long before we can all be reunited with our much loved and respected Dippy."

Thankfully, a solution was found. Dippy's account was closed because he isn't a "real person". Now, instead of a personal profile page, he has a Dippy Seaview fan page and "is looking forward to an exciting new chapter of communication ... engaging on topics ranging from fun, frivolous flutters to conservational messages and educational insights".

His keepers are concerned that they lost contact with many of Dippy's old friends when his original account was closed. Hopefully old friends will become new fans - and also those who previously weren't Dippy's friends will get on board. I have!

Sources
Dippy's new fan page, 18 February 2011, Seaview Wildlife Encounter blog
Dippy returns to Facebook, 15 February 2011, Seaview Wildlife Encounter blog
Letters of the week - support for Dippy the penguin, 13 February 2011, Seaview Wildlife Encounter blog
Facebook gives penguin the bird by Jason Kay, 10 February 2011, The Isle of Wight Gazette
Dippy the penguin - crestfallen after closure of Facebook account, 8 February 2011, Seaview Wildlife Encounter blog

Rising temperatures spell trouble for Ross Sea penguins

Adelie colony at Cape Bird South,
Ross Island. Photo (c) Landcare
Research New Zealand Limited.

ANTARCTICA - The results for this year's census of the Adelie penguin population in the Ross Sea region shows it's not likely to be a good breeding season. And there's worse news to come for the region's Adelies and their emperor brethren if temperature in the region increases as predicted.

Dr Phil Lyver of Landcare Research and his fellow scientists monitor the penguin population annually both on the ground and using a low-flying plane. This year the aerial census suffered from ongoing technical and weather issues, so only four penguin colonies were photographed.

Photos of the four sites were analysed using a computer program, and results did not bode well for a good breeding season, Dr Lyver told the Otago Daily Times from Scott Base.

"The colonies of Franklin Island, Inexpressible Island and Terra Nova appeared to be quite snow covered, which meant the penguins would have struggled to find their nesting sites and stones to build their nests this year at those sites."

Research by Dr Lyver and his colleagues indicate that the long-term future for the populations of Adelie and emperor penguins in the Ross Sea is looking even more dire if temperature in the region increases within the next 40 years as predicted.

"For this region, we're looking at a 2°C increase in the troposphere occurring around 2025-50," Dr Lyver told the Otago Daily Times.

The temperature increase would cause melting of the sea ice on which both Adelie and emperor penguins depended for foraging for krill and fish.

"We are looking at losing potentially 70% of our Adelie penguin colonies north of 70° south, and that's basically a 75% loss of the entire population of Adelie penguins in Antarctica."

The rising temperature could be even more devastating for the emperor penguin population, with some research modelling predicting that emperors may be functionally extinct by the end of the century.

So this may be a tough year for the penguins, but there are even tougher times to come.

Source
Warming sends chills down penguins' spines by Joe Dodgshun, 17 February 2011, Otago Daily Times

Ecological Monographs citation
Antarctic penguin response to habitat change as Earth’s troposphere reaches 2°C above preindustrial levels. D.G. Ainley, J. Russell, S. Jenouvrier, E. Woehler, P.O'B. Lyver, W.R. Fraser, G.L. Kooyman. Ecological Mongraphs 80(1), 2010.

"Survivor" penguins sent from Brazil to US

Magellanic penguins in Patagonia.
Photo by * hiro008.
Some rights reserved.

Brazilian scientists have sent a group of around 20 rescued Magellanic penguins to the US for an exhibition on climate change at Monterey Bay Aquarium in California.

The birds are the survivors from hundreds of penguins that washed up last year on beaches near Rio de Janeiro after migrating from southern Argentina.

Scientists told AFP that the penguins have been migrating further north in recent years, possibly because of climate change, and the longer journeys are taking their toll on the penguin population. These changing migration patterns are currently being studied by Brazilian environmental authorities.

The penguins arrived safely in Los Angeles, where they will be quarantined before being sent to the aquarium.

Hopefully, since the penguins are poster children for climate change, their carers tried to minimise the carbon footprint of their journey from South America to the States.

Source
Beached penguins sent by Brazil to US, 15 February 2011, AFP